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November 27 To my Malek Fahd friendsTo five dear students, Zaynab, Eman, Alina, Marwa, and Tanvir, I dedicate the following poem. Thank you for your lovely thoughts and well wishes. I am honoured to know you.
Book Marks
Tis said a life is like a book
Chapters, leaves - the seasons brook
Beginnings, ends, journeys, signs,
Textures of the language mime.
Books mark
***
Contiguous time and pages scribed are
Footprints, residue, a paste of tense
Attached fibrously on barbed wire,
Anxiously written, so quickly forgotten
almost pointless - although.
***
Coming back is optional like
Hansel and Gretel's orientation
Disaster, a plan in need
Of an edible
Book mark.
- Mangomop (2008) October 31 Late Late October OfferingGift of Rain
1
Cloudburst and steady downpour now
for days.
Still mammal,
straw-footed on the mud,
he begins to sense weather
by his skin.
A nimble snout of flood
licks over stepping stones
and goes uprooting.
He fords
his life by sounding.
Soundings.
II
A man wading lost fields
breaks the pane of flood:
a flower of mud-
water blooms up to his reflection
like a cut swaying
its spoors through a basin.
His hands grub
where the spade has uncastled
sunken drills, an atlantis
he depends on. So
he is hooped to where he planted
and sky and ground
are running naturally among his arms
that grope the cropping land.
III
When rains were gathering
there would be an all-night
roaring off the ford.
Their world-schooled ear
could monitor the usual
confabulations, the race
slabbering past the gable,
the Moyola harping on
its gravel beds:
all spouts by daylight
brimmed with their own airs
and overflowed each barrel
in long tresses.
I cock my ear
at an absense -
in the shared calling of blood
arrives my need
for antediluvian lore.
Soft voices of the dead
are whispering by the shore
that I would question
(and for my children's sake)
about crops rotted, river mud
glazing the baked clay floor.
IV
The tawny guttural water
spells itself: Moyola
is its own score and consort,
bedding the locale
in the uttereance,
reed music, an old chanter
breathing its mists
through vowels and history.
A swollen river,
a mating call of sound
rises to pleasure me, Dives,
hoarder of common ground.
- Seamus Heaney
New Selected Poems 1966-1987 August 14 August arrived bringing the migrantsNight Ride
Along the black
leather strap
of the night
deserted road
swiftly rolls
the freighted bus
Huddled together
two lovers doze
their hands linkt
across their laps
their bodies loosely
interlockt
their heads resting
two heavy fruits
on the plaited
basket of their limbs
Slowly the bus
slides into the light
Here are hills
detached from dark
the road, uncoils
a white ribbon
the lovers with
the hills unfold
wake cold
to face the fate
of those who love
despite the world.
- Herbert Read July 19 July Penance - 2 for the Price of OneThe Meaning of Existence
Everything except language
knows the meaning of existence
trees, plants, rivers, time
know nothing else. They express it
moment by moment as the universe
Even this fool of a body
lives in part, and would
have full dignity within it
but for the ignorant freedom
of my talkative mind
- Les Murray
Landscape with the Fall of Icarus
According to Brueghel
when Icarus fell
it was spring
a farmer was ploughing
his field
the whole pageantry
of the year was
awake tingling
near
the edge of the sea
concerned
with itself
sweating in the sun
that melted
the wings' wax
unsignificantly
off the coast
there was
a splash quite unnanounced
this was
Icarus drowning.
- William Carlos Williams June 06 The Moon is Jeuneone day
I am walking down a road that cannot erupt with lava towards a morning sun that cannot fall from the sky I run into an ugly-looking woman I cannot fall in love with in her hand she is carrying a dead fish that cannot be brought back to life she uses filthy language that cannot be beautiful at this moment I cannot grow a pair of wings and fly up into the clouds in the sky I go home to a house that cannot collapse and run into my father whom I cannot get along with at this moment, I'm too big I cannot turn myself into a rat and quietly creep into my hole in some corner tonight I lie down on my bed that cannot turn into the open sea at this moment I cannot die but I have a dream: the sun falls to the earth lava erupts from the ground I fly up into the sky kissing the sweet lips of a woman the fish she carries in her hand is singing hymns my father kneels down beside a ruin and says, pointing at the sky "what a great man he is" next morning I wake from my dream I cannot believe that it was real - Sheng Xing http://china.poetryinternationalweb.org/piw_cms/cms/cms_module/index.php?obj_id=971 May 03 Merry Month of MayThe Ides of Amer-I-Can O tempora! O mores! —Cicero I write in times of plus and minus, in • Her T-shirt exclaims NF! and this is America • My grandpa used to say as we'd drive • We've clocked the sneeze doing 90. • Today even blood can kill, I can tell March 30 April is My Month & this is My PoetWe are the clumsy passersby We are the clumsy passersby, we push past each other with elbows,
by Pablo Neruda March 06 Poem for MarchPersonal Helicon
for Michael Longley
As a child, they could not keep me from wells And old pumps with buckets and windlasses.
I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells
Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss.
One, in a brickyard, with a rotted board top.
I savoured the rich crash when a bucket
Plummeted down at the end of a rope.
So deep you saw no reflection in it.
A shallow one under a dry stone ditch
Fructified like any aquarium.
When you dragged out long roots from the soft mulch
A white face hovered over the bottom.
Others had echoes, gave back your own call
With a clean new music in it. And one
Was scaresome, for there, out of ferns and tall
Foxgloves, a rat slapped across my reflection.
Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime,
To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring
Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme
To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.
February 15 Feb 2007Choosing to Think of It Today, ten thousand people will die
and their small replacements will bring joy
and this will make sense to someone
removed from any sense of loss.
I, too, will die a little and carry on,
doing some paperwork, driving myself
home. The sky is simply overcast,
nothing is any less than it was
yesterday or the day before. In short,
there's no reason or every reason
why I'm choosing to think of this now.
The short-lived holiness
true lovers know, making them unaccountable
except to spirit and themselves--suddenly
I want to be that insufferable and selfish,
that sharpened and tuned.
I'm going to think of what it means
to be an animal crossing a highway,
to be a human without a useful prayer
setting off on one of those journeys
we humans take. I don't expect anything
to change. I just want to be filled up
a little more with what exists,
tipped toward the laughter which understands
I'm nothing and all there is.
By evening, the promised storm
will arrive. A few in small boats
will be taken by surprise.
There will be survivors, and even they will die.
-- Stephen Dunn January 05 January 2007"Libertad! Igualdad! Fraternidad!"
You sullen pig of a man
you force me into the mud with your stinking ash-cart! Brother!
--if we were rich we'd stick our chests out and hold our heads high! It is dreams that have destroyed us.
There is no more pride
in horses or in rein holding. We sit hunched together brooding our fate. Well--
all things turn bitter in the end whether you choose the right or the left way and-- dreams are not a bad thing. - William Carlos Williams December 02 Poem for December dedicated to AntonioAlentejo Seen From The TrainNothing with nothing around it
And a few trees in between
None of which very clearly green,
Where no river or flower pays a visit.
If there be a hell, I've found it,
For if ain't here, where the Devil it is?
Fernado Pessoa (1907) November 23 One of my poemsAt The Box
I listened at the box
for the double talking
and the wind walk
among the reeds and the
wooden slats to distant muddy
shores the lapping sounds
of dragonflys and geese flying south
mirrored my pretense
before the sun changed hue
depression is the hour it bends
when coffee gets colder
sleep rustles and points like trees
that are blown about from
window panes and mailboxes
fixed to posts and fences
painted in mental homes
And when I wear glasses
I see my hands fog around issues
like chasing the bus it comes
with practice that and the looks
they stare into parts of a watch
made in the morning of a moment
somewhere that I could be
if it came to that but it doesn't
and its easy to forget
it was my turn to count
-Mangomop 2004 November 04 Poem for NovemberThe Ballad of the Girlie Man
—For Felix The truth is hidden in a veil of tears The scabs of the mourners grow thick with fear A democracy once proposed Is slimmed and grimed again By men with brute design Who prefer hate to rime Complexity's a four-letter word For those who count by nots and haves Who revile the facts of Darwin To worship the truth according to Halliburton The truth is hidden in a veil of tears The scabs of the mourners grow thick with fear Thugs from hell have taken freedom's store The rich get richer, the poor die quicker & the only god that sanctions that Is no god at all but rhetorical crap So be a girly man & take a gurly stand Sing a gurly song & dance with a girly sarong Poetry will never win the war on terror But neither will error abetted by error We girly men are not afraid Of uncertainty or reason or interdependence We think before we fight, then think some more Proclaim our faith in listening, in art, in compromise So be a girly man & sing this gurly song Sissies & proud That we would never lie our way to war The girly men killed christ So the platinum DVD says The Jews & blacks & gays Are still standing in the way We're sorry we killed your god A long, long time ago But each dead solider in Iraq Kills the god inside, the god that's still not dead. The truth is hidden in a veil of tears The scabs of the mourners grow thick with fear So be a girly man & sing a gurly song Take a gurly stand & dance with a girly sarong Thugs from hell have taken freedom's store The rich get richer, the poor die quicker & the only god that sanctions that Is no god at all but rhetorical crap So be a girly man & sing this gurly song Sissies & proud That we would never lie our way to war The scabs of the mourners grow thick with fear The truth is hidden in a veil of tears - Charles Bernstein
July 07 Poetry JulyMy MessageAnd now you ask but i want the cadences i want syllables i want my consonants i want such rhythms i want every punctuation -- i want the assonances and yes, yes, i want my poems
- Cecil Rajendra June 14 June PoemOn the Road HomeIt was when I said
'There is no such thing as the truth,'
That the grapes seemed fatter.
The fox ran out of his hole.
You... You said
'There are many truths,
But they are not the parts of a truth.'
Then the tree, at night, began to change,
Smoking through green and smoking blue.
We were two figures in a wood.
We said we stood alone.
It was when I said,
'Words are not forms of a single word.
in the sum of the parts, there are only the parts.
The word must be measured by eye';
It was when you said,
'The idols have seen lots of poverty,
Snakes and gold and lice,
But not the truth';
It was at that time, that the silence was largest
And longest, the night was roundest,
The fragrance of the autumn warmest,
Closest and strangest.
- Wallace Stevens May 12 May PoemDerrida at Dunedoo
Living so very far away here, you're nowhere;
at most an insert in a tourist brochure
for the Bicentennial Sheep Museum
or the funny pub that once upon a time
featured on a brewerey calendar
(not even the locals now remember the year).
You'll never be the Big Thing on the edge of town
that everybody wants a postcard of.
Here, meaning can never be that simple.
The silo is the only skyscraper
and the rest of your horizon - the true blue -
is unconceivable unless the moon
leaves a dusty thumbprint, or it rains.
The ants of the dry clay make a language
if you want it. But since you've read so much
you don't believe in poetry or nature.
So here, in borrowed style, is a long beer
and a vision of the mortgaged plains,
framed by a verandah on the blunt edge
of history. The bones in the back paddock
could be Koori or they could be your Great-Uncle Aub
- but putting them together would be rather
like sculpture, or like resurrecting space junk.
Besides your garden, and your lush good looks
keep you much too busy, keep you at home.
- Peter Kirkpatrick April 07 Poem for April
March 01 March Poem
February 07 Poetry for a FebruaryI Used to Admire
I used to admire
Men who sailed unknown seas or climbed dangerous mountains,
Who flew planes in the Yukon or parachuted for fun,
Men who built their own houses and planted with their own hands,
Giants who built shopping centres and skyscrapers 100 stories high.
I used to admire
Priests who missionaried in China and scientists who discovered cures,
Industrialists who built empires, celebrities who made a mark.
Now I'm glad I've lived long enough to do some of the things
I used to admire
Lately I only admire people
Who do what they have to do.
-James Kavanaugh
Outwitted
He drew a circle that shut me out -
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!
- Edwin Markham
January 14 Poem for January 2006Beach Burial
Softly and humbly to the Gulf of ArabsThe convoys of dead soldiers come;At night they sway and wander in the waters far under,But the morning rolls in the foamBetween the sob and the clubbing of the gunfireSomeone it seems, has time for this,To pluck from the shallows and bury them in the burrowsAnd tread the sand upon their nakedness;And each cross, the driven stake of tidewood,Bears the last signature of men,Written with such perplexity, with such bewildered pity,The words choke as they begin-“Unknown seaman” – the ghostly pencilWavers and fades, the purple drips,The breath of the wet season has washed their inscriptionsAs blue as drowned men’s lips,Dead seamen, gone in search of the same landfill,Whether as enemies they fought,Or fought with us, or neither; the sand joins them together,Enlisted on the other front.El Alamein.- Kenneth Slessor |
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